


The Other Woman

by crackleviolet



Series: Violets are Blue [12]
Category: Mystic Messenger (Video Game)
Genre: F/M, Implied/Referenced Cheating, Plot Twists
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-08-19
Updated: 2017-08-19
Packaged: 2018-12-17 06:39:06
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,413
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11846031
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/crackleviolet/pseuds/crackleviolet
Summary: It’s Valentine’s Day and Jumin goes to visit another woman. AKA I attempt to fix that damned DLC because I hate it so damn much MUMBLE GRUMBLE GROAN





	The Other Woman

Throughout the course of her life, Ji-eun had been many things. She had been an artist, a business woman, a neglected wife and more. She had never been the other woman, though, and the irony of it all left her smirking into her wine glass.

“Tell me about your wife,” she said, glancing at the man sitting opposite and all of the while drinking in his stony expression as she might a flute of champagne.

Jumin did not make a point to see her very often and, when he did, it was never for long. It was almost as if he felt ashamed for being in her presence, which she supposed made sense, considering.

“I’d rather not.”

“Why not? We are something like family, after all.”

In truth she had wondered a lot about the woman he returned to when he left her.  She had seen photographs, read magazine articles, viewed the strange woman’s face on television and absorbed as much about her as she might. At first it was mere curiosity; the shape of her nose and the size of her hands. It was difficult not to feel as if she knew her when she caught the lingering scent of her perfume on Jumin’s clothes and the intonation of her voice when he answered the phone.

In the back of her mind, she knew she and Mrs Han had never met and likely never would. She was the Other Woman: a false name in Jumin’s phonebook; a lie as he fastened his shirt. Even as she cradled her wine glass, she found herself glancing across at the presents he had so carefully arranged by her apartment door. They had been sitting there for three days, leaving her ample time to examine each one in a certain amount of detail, wondering about Mrs Han as she read every name tag. It was difficult not to imagine her tearing open the paper and laughing in the same singsong voice Ji-eun had heard over the phone. A thank you to Jumin, a kiss to his cheek.

“Isn’t your wife sad to be alone on Valentine’s day?”

Her eyes skirted the boxes and he shifted in his seat. She already knew the answer.

Two months beforehand, she crossed paths with them by accident at her favourite restaurant in the city. She had intended to meet an ex colleague for a dinner date, but instead settled for watching them, taking in the way Jumin reached for his wife’s hand across the table as she examined the wine menu. Their table was only a short walk from hers, close enough for her to watch them in fascination, though far enough away that her own presence was not immediately obvious. It was only towards the end of dinner, in fact, that his eyes met hers across the room and the colour drained from his face.

She knew she was little more than a secret, and arguably a dirty one, but there was no denying his reaction hurt.

“You really are your father’s son,” she said, wondering all of the while what excuse he used to come to her. What exactly did Mrs Han believe her husband was doing?

The implications hit him hard, she knew, but the memory of his retreating back and discreet backwards glance left her feeling rather more cruel than usual.

“I suppose that you would know,” he sniffed, composure regained in a matter of seconds. “He told me you were ill.”

He said it as if he meant to change the subject, though she knew it had been at the back of his mind from the moment he stepped through the door. It was difficult to miss the way he scanned the layout of her apartment as he so carefully arranged the gifts for his wife; the way he complained of a headache, only to spend a good five minutes rifling through her bathroom cupboard when the aspirin bottle remained in plain view.

She had been naive to think that her presence or lack thereof meant no one was paying attention. She was a carefully kept secret and required constant vigilance.

She supposed he did not see her often enough to take note of her thinning hair or the puncture marks on the insides of her arms. She did not look ill by any stretch of the imagination and when he looked at her, she knew he did not see her diagnosis.

“He says a lot of things these days,” she said, regaining her composure just as quickly and setting aside her glass.

She scanned his face; the handsome features she knew so well and yet were not in the least bit familiar. Strange as it was, she could not recall ever seeing him smile as he had on the evening she saw him at dinner.

“Go home to your wife,” she said, dusting off her lap and rising from her chair. “And don’t come here anymore. There is nothing for you here.”

“Perhaps not,” he said, “but you are still my responsibility.”

Out of the corner of her eye, she saw him rise from his chair and hesitatingly reach for her shoulder, only to reconsider at the last second. Ji-eun wanted nothing more than to tell him to leave her monochrome apartment and go where she could not follow. Back to something he could reach out and touch without a hint of dishonesty.

She did not go so far, though, as to break the facade of cool indifference.

“I never asked for such a thing,” she said, catching the flicker of hurt and confusion in his eyes before he gathered his composure.

She had hurt him dreadfully and later, sitting alone in one waiting room or another, would almost certainly regret it. It was for the best, however.

She knew it even as he gathered the gifts for his wife and muttered polite goodbyes. She knew it as she watched from her apartment windows as he texted his wife, lips curling into a smile. She had known ever since the smile dissolved from his face that day in the restaurant.

He was better off without her in the arms of that other woman; a woman she knew nothing about, but left him almost entirely possessed and unrecognisable from the child she once held in her arms. A child whose toothy smiles grew smaller as the years rolled by; who once wrapped his arms around her neck and protested as she ushered him from her lap, later reaching out for handshakes instead.

She waited by the window for a long time after he left, considering that maybe one day in the future he would forgive her, not only for that day, but all that had gone before.

Ji-eun retreated into her empty apartment with a sigh, picking up her wineglass and then his, freezing on the spot when she noticed a box on the coffee table. It was wrapped in colourful paper and tied with a red ribbon and for a second she wondered if he had forgotten one of the extensive collection he had in mind for Mrs Han.

The label proved otherwise, however. It was as carefully written as each of the ones she had glanced at on previous days, but instead of Mrs Han’s name, hers was on it. She ran her fingers across the pen strokes as she sank back down into her chair, never opening the box, though silently acknowledging that it was the first she had received in well over twenty years. The first, if she recalled correctly, was handmade and still covered in glue and she had slapped away her son’s fingers when it ruined her dress.

She knew she ought to have been sad; should have lingered over her lack of presents. She should, rationally, have been far more than confused when she realised she no longer recognised her son, but instead she found that that prospect cheered her up. Jumin was that other woman’s husband now; a man who reached to hold hands and laughed at jokes, even if it was only shyly. He finally had someone who love him with an open heart.

And even though she was happy, her eyes blurred with tears, leaving her laughing as she brushed them aside. It was irrational to grieve a stranger, to miss someone she’d never known, and yet more often of late she found herself mourning the other woman she might have been from the beginning.


End file.
